PREFACE. 



ery reader would picture to himself a foundation for tiic 

 Heavenly Jerusalem of the plcasantest stone for the eye 

 to gaze upon, that earth can produce. 



Murray, in his Encyclopedia of Geography, tli3 first 

 work of its class, says : "To the fig tribe belongs the 

 famous banyan of India, commonly called peepul tree, 

 and constantly planted about Hindoo temples (Ficus rdi- 

 giosa.Jt' But the famous banyan is not commonly called 

 peepul, but bir ; and the peepul is not the banyan, and 

 the tree which is usually planted about Hindu temples 

 is not the banyan, but the peepul, and the banyan is not 

 Ficus religiosa, but Ficus indicus. Again, he remarks : 

 "Far superior to this [the cocoa] in the magnitude of its 

 leaves, of which a single one will shelter twelve men, is 

 the palmyra palm (Boi'assus jlabdliformis ,) which some- 

 times attains to one hundred feet, while its trunk yields 

 abundantly toddy or palm wine." 



It is true the palmyra produces toddy, not however 

 from the trunk, but from the spathes that bear the flow- 

 ers and fruit, but the leaf of the palmyra is not much 

 larger than a larae cabbage leaf, and the reference to 

 the leaf should have been to the great fan palm of Cey- 

 lon, Corypha umbraculifcra, a palm not of the same 

 genus with the palmyra. 



In a little work published by the American Tract Socie- 

 ty, it is written : " In some hot countries where water is 

 scarce, travellers obtain a supply from tlie palm tree ;" 

 and the statement is illustrated by a very good represen- 

 tation of the common plantain tree, with a fine stream of 

 water gushing from an incision that has been made in the 

 trunk ! 



The writer had probably some confused ideas of the 

 palm producing toddy, or the traveller's tree, handsome 

 urania, which produces water when a leaf is broken off; 

 or of the water-vine, phytocrene, an immense creeper that 

 grows on our thirsty mountain sides, which when dis- 

 severed discharges a large quantity of water, that is a most 

 grateful beverage in a hot day, when far above the streams 

 of the vallies. 



